Web Services is happy to announce a new blogging platform at VCU, blogs.vcu.edu. This new iteration of blogging at VCU is more secure and focuses on strictly blogging. It features an all new set of plugins and beautifully designed VCU theme.

The ability to create new blogs on wp.vcu.edu has been shut off at this time. All new blogs will need to be made on the blogs.vcu.edu platform.

In an effort to get everything ready for the new school year, the wp.vcu.edu blogging service will undergo maintenance on Thursday, August 18th from 5:30-6 a.m. This change has been approved and is detailed in the Change Request #9000517.

During this time all blogs and websites hosted on the platform will be unavailable for about 10 minutes.

In an effort to harden the security of WordPress and at the request of the Information Security Office, we have removed a component that is used to connect the VCU WordPress Jetpack plugin with the Jetpack service. The Jetpack plugin is commonly used to allow users to subscribe to your blog’s posts and show statistics about visits.

At this time we are unable to recover this functionality even temporarily due to how it was maliciously being targeted.

Web Services is currently working on a new WordPress configuration in an effort to secure the platform and maintain the university’s reputation. We hope to regain this functionality in the near future, but do not have a definitive timeframe at this time.

The administrative dashboards for all sites on VCU’s instance of WordPress on wp.vcu.edu will be unavailable on the morning of Friday, November 7th, as the University Computer Center will be working on the database servers.

Content on wp.vcu.edu that is CAS-restricted will also be unavailable. All other published content will remain publicly accessible.

The upgrade is scheduled to last from 6 to 9 a.m. Please contact the VCU helpIT Center (828-2227, helpIT@vcu.edu) with any questions.

Update: This change has been rescheduled for Thursday, March 27, at 7:30 a.m.

The dashboards for sites on wp.vcu.edu will soon be getting a major facelift. We will be upgrading WordPress to version 3.8, which “brings a fresh new look to the entire admin dashboard,” according to its makers.

We normally update WordPress quietly, and you likely don’t notice when we do. However, this update overhauls the dashboard so significantly that we wanted to make you aware of the changes. Read the blog post announcing WordPress 3.8 to read about these changes in more detail.

At the same time, we will be making some tweaks and adjustments behind the scenes. These should provide wp.vcu.edu with a performance boost.

As part of routine maintenance on VCU’s WordPress installation, a number of unused personal blogs will be deleted on Tuesday, February 18. The following criteria were used to identify the blogs that will be deleted:

the blog’s path (the first part of the URL after wp.vcu.edu/) is the same as the owner’s eID; AND

the blog has no published posts, pages or attachments, or there is only the default ‘Hello World!’ post or ‘Sample Page’ page; AND

the blog has not been updated since September 1, 2013.

Owners of these blogs will be notified by email that their blogs are scheduled for deletion. If there are any questions, please email the VCU Webmaster.

Update: Additionally, blogs belonging to former students or former employees will also be deleted. These former users will not be notified by email.

The administrative dashboards for all sites on VCU’s instance of WordPress on wp.vcu.edu will be unavailable on the morning of Saturday, June 15, as the University Computer Center increases the RAM in one of its database servers.

Content on wp.vcu.edu that is CAS-restricted will also be unavailable. All other published content will remain publicly accessible.

The upgrade is scheduled to last from 9 to 10:30 a.m., though the official Change Management entry says it may be completed in less time. The change has been scheduled to minimize any disruption. Please contact the VCU helpIT Center (828-2227, helpIT@vcu.edu) with any questions.

VCU’s instance of WordPress on wp.vcu.edu will be unavailable on the morning of Saturday, March 9, as the University Computer Center upgrades its database server. During this time, published content and administrative functionality will be inaccessible.

The upgrade is scheduled to last four hours, though the official Change Management entry says it may be completed in less time. The change has been scheduled to minimize any disruption. Please contact the VCU helpIT Center (828-2227, helpIT@vcu.edu) with any questions.

Akismet, a web service offered by the creators of WordPress.com to help control spam, is now in full effect across every site on wp.vcu.edu. That means you should see a significant decrease in the amount of spam comments requiring your moderation.

Each time a new comment, trackback, or pingback is added to your site it’s submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down. As a result, you don’t have to waste your time sorting through and deleting spammy comments from your blog.

Update: You can set a couple of configuration options for Akismet by going to Jetpack > Akismet Configuration on your dashboard. You can also view your ham versus spam stats at Jetpack > Akismet Stats. (Note that Jetpack does not need to be enabled for you to use Akismet, which is already enabled for everyone — they are both simply developed by Automattic, the creators of wordpress.com.)